Airport runway too narrow for diverted Airbus A380 |19 May 2018

Seychelles International Airport’s runway is too narrow to take an Airbus A380, hence an Emirates flight that could not land in Mauritius with 500 passengers recently had to fly all the way to Tanzania.

Seychelles Civil Aviation Authority (SCAA) said this in response to enquiries by this newspaper, as people including reporters in many countries wondered why the flight did not come to Seychelles or some of the other airports in the Indian Ocean or eastern Africa.

A regional publication which sells millions of its copies speculated that Seychelles may have been considered too close to Mauritius and strong winds could have been the main consideration for the decision to take the three and a half hour diversion flight to Dar es Salaam.

Many argued that since our international airport comfortably takes the Boeing 747 which requires a longer runway than an Airbus A380, and even took the Concord in the supersonic jet’s days of glory, the diverted plane could have comfortably touched down here.

“An Airbus A380 cannot be accommodated at the Seychelles International Airport (SIA) as it requires a runway width of at least 60 metres. SIA’s runway width is 46 metres,” the SCAA told Seychelles NATION in a statement.

As Tanzanians rejoiced and airport authorities there invited the country’s media to witness the historic landing, newspapers around published lengthy analysis.

“The surprise diversion of an Emirates Airbus A380 to Dar es Salaam gave East Africa a real time test of what it takes to handle a commercial flight by a super jumbo,” wrote one publication that sells millions of copies in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

“The Emirates flight EK 701, destined for Mauritius’ Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport, was diverted to Julius Nyerere International Airport because of bad weather,” said The East African.

Passengers on the flight reportedly said the aircraft had circled over Mauritius for a while before the crew decided to divert it to Dar es Salaam, three hours northwest of its intended destination.

“The unexpected arrival of the super jumbo, only the second landing by the type in the wider East African region, focused attention on the region’s aviation infrastructure, with some commentators wondering if Dar es Salaam had the capacity to handle the world’s largest passenger aircraft,” read one report.

In a tweet, a passenger who was on the flight suggested that the ground crew in Dar es Salaam were overwhelmed and did not even know how to disembark the stranded passengers.

Some sources said the rare diversion that saw the 503 passengers and crew spend a night in Dar es Salaam was the culmination of a long anticipated drill by Emirates.

One report said when the Emirates planned to expand its A380 operations into the southern hemisphere, it evaluated a number of African airports for emergency diversions of A380 flights.

“The evaluations involved simulated landings and primarily focused on the aeronautical infrastructure at a given airport and its ability to facilitate a safe landing by an A380.

“Whatever the reason, in an emergency, the priority is to get the aircraft safely onto the ground. Other considerations such as logistics are secondary,” said a retired pilot in Uganda.

“The Emirates assessed Entebbe as a diversion for its A380’s in 2011, and the airport passed. The only limitation is that the aircraft would use only the two inboard engines during the taxi to avoid sucking in grass,” said the report.

“While the Antananarivo Airport in Madagascar and even the Seychelles were closer to Mauritius than Dar es Salaam, that part of the Indian Ocean is notorious for its stormy weather and the storm cells could have extended to those airports. This left Dar es Salaam as a safe diversion within available range,” said the report, which prompted Seychelles NATION to find out the real reason for avoiding Mahé since we are outside the extreme weather zone the named countries fall in.

“Choosing a diversion airport is a function of safety in terms of how far the aircraft can go in its present state and conditions for landing at the destination airport,” one aviation expert was quoted as saying.

Although the passengers thought Dar es Salaam could not handle the A380, for the aircraft to have a market, the manufacturer designed it to be able to operate without modifications to existing airport infrastructure.

It was designed with many wheels so that its massive weight of 562 tonnes would not require new runways to be built while its wingspan had to fit within existing gates.

Some airports and even airline operators have developed dedicated A380 terminals but these are largely optional and intended for operational efficiency.

With more than 100 A380s in its fleet, Emirates is the world’s largest A380 operator and is continually developing new routes for the super jumbo.

So far in Africa, the carrier operates the A380 on one of its four daily flights to Johannesburg. The other destination for Emirates A380 is Mauritius.

British Airways and Air France also operate A380’s to Johannesburg. But Emirates A380 flights to Brazil overfly parts of Africa, making diversion airports on the continent a necessity.

In recent years, East Africa has been expanding its aviation infrastructure to cope with growth in the air transport industry.

 While airport terminals have been the main subject of these upgrades, attendant to that has been the incorporation of new technology features to improve security and safety.

Kenya, which opened its new-build Terminal A in 2015 is now building a second runway at the Jomo Kenyatta international Airport.

Rwanda expects the first phase of its Greenfield airport at Bugesera to open in December 2019. While not building a completely new airport, Uganda is expanding the passenger and cargo terminals at Entebbe International Airport.

Tanzania is also completing a new passenger terminal. These developments will increase the capacity of the region’s airports to handle not just more passengers but more aircraft movements as well.